Where Even Mavericks Have a Home

Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
And whatever comes our way.
* Lyrics from Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild"


New Mexico's reputation as a wild and remote place has forever endeared it to independent filmmakers. Along with Arizona, New Mexico was the last of the Lower 48 states to enter the Union. In point of fact, as well as in the collective imagination, New Mexico came to represent the final frontier, a sanctuary for mavericks, where artists and cowboys rubbed elbows but seldom got in each other's hair.

The romance of the Wild West persisted in New Mexico long after the rest of the country grew tame and civilized. Tucumcari, the eastern gateway to the state, originally went by the menacing moniker of Six-Shooter Siding. The loners and outlaws, rebels and dreamers, stumblebums and charlatans who drifted like tumbleweeds into this vast territory contributed to its special nature as surely as the hellish outcrops of desert and the breathless mountain spires arching toward the heavens above.

No wonder Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper chose the rugged landscape of New Mexico as the backdrop for much of Easy Rider, the archetypal movie that defined the bravado spirit of independent filmmaking. Who could escape the metaphorical implications behind Fonda and Hopper's rootless characters? They stood as the last links to American traditions vanishing as swiftly as the buffalo. The freedom-loving Wyatt, alias Captain America, and his scruffy sidekick Billy, cruised the open highways on long-finned motorcycles instead of sleek horses. But their names gave it all away - they were meant as living, swaggering and lusty incarnations of the doomed legendary figures from frontier lore.

But let's not jump the gun. To explore the roots of independent filmmaking in New Mexico, one must go back 15 years before Easy Rider to a groundbreaking production made with hard-rock conviction by a team of Hollywood outcasts. Director Herbert J. Biberman (Meet Nero Wolfe), producer Paul Jarrico (Tom, Dick and Harry) and screenwriter Michael Wilson (It's a Wonderful Life) had all flourished in the studio system until they fell under a dark cloud of suspicion as members of the original Hollywood Ten. Summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating Communist ties to the movie industry in 1947, they refused to testify. The studios, caving in to the political heat from Washington, promptly blacklisted the trio, banishing them from Tinseltown.